Homebrewers: What Do You Brew?

[Mafro]

Hey all, I'm curious how much custom work most world-builders are putting into their homebrews. Do you leave everything pretty much "standard" (e.g. Core Rules) and rearrange it to your own liking or are you building everything from scratch? Somewhere in the middle?

My apologies to those who may have seen this poll on another site...just trying to get as wide a range of responses as possible.

 

[Gilladian]

It depends so much on what you mean. I "homebrew" feats and skills in that I have a list of allowed feats, a list of my own definitions for skills, a couple of home-made skills (languages), and etc...

My deities were originally lifted from a published source, 20+ years ago. They've undergone significant modification over time since then.

My homebrewing is MUCH more along the lines of creating a "world", not monkeying with a rules system. If I liked monkeying with rules, I'd drop back to a much simpler system that modifies with less chance of "crashing" than 3.5 has.

 

[Arkhandus]

Depends.
I work off-and-on with several different homebrew D&D settings and suchlike, though only three are really significant to me (Azeria, Aurelia, and Rhunaria; the first three I thought up; Azeria is 99% rules-as-written D&D with merely a customized world to run the game in, and a homebrew pantheon of deities replacing the core pantheon; Aurelia is heavy overhauling and tweaking of the system along with a slightly more-different custom world; and Rhunaria is minor tweaking, about 90% RAW, focused heavily on the custom world setting which is the only reason for the bit of gradual rules tweaking I've done for it).

But I like to tinker, both with RPing ideas and rules material. I just prefer tinkering with game mechanics, though often as not the tinkering is based on roleplaying-related ideas for the setting/world.

I make customized versions and new stuff of just about any sort. I usually leave the core rules 90-99% intact, but change a rule here and there, or add some extra stuff to a class or race, or modify the way a spell, power, weapon, magic item, or special ability works so as to be more clear/fair.

I rarely make new skills or mess with the existing skills, but there are a few instances of it in my work. Most of my homebrews use the core feats and those from other books, but with an occasional feat-tweaking or custom feat of my own. Only for a few homebrew ideas, that have more to do with heavily altering the d20 system to better fit certain concepts or just to be different, actually involve me creating a lot of custom feats to replace the core feats altogether. Only in those same homebrews do I bother messing with the skills much, also.

I usually keep existing classes and may add a few here and there, but rarely take out a class. I do tend to add small or moderate benefits to classes, and I prefer to balance things by adding and tweaking the less effective/flexible/glorious classes, rather than taking away from the good classes (there are exceptions). Prestige classes I'm more likely to take out or drastically alter before allowing them, though many I just tweak a little or use as-printed. I make a lot of custom prestige classes too.

Still, there are a few homebrews where I build nearly everything from scratch, using only the core mechanic of the d20 system and the basic form of the classes and combat rules in d20.

 

[Mycanid]

Kombucha!

 

[Dog Moon]

For my world, I've been doing a little bit of everything, though I mainly enjoy monsters and occasionally classes or templates.

For a taste of my monsters: Dog Moon's creations

 

[doghead]

For the last 5 years, pbp gaming has been been pretty much my only role-play outlet. Most of it has been here at Enworld. When I started, I had no books with me, so I played off the SRD. Which meant, when I wanted to run a game of my own, I had to home-brew the setting. Over the years I have tended to work with variations of three basic settings; your vanilla fantasy medieval Europe, feudal japan, and an anime influenced Edwardian steam-punk.

I now have a couple of published settings on the shelf somewhere, but have never run any games with them.

For as long as I have been gaming (which is much more than 10 years), I have been fiddling with the rules. I have created whole new systems. I tend to do it less these days, as it just raises the bar to entry. The two biggest changes I made when playing 3.5 were the adoption of Ken Hood's Grim and Gritty Revised Rules for combat, and the development of a classless character generation system. I still use the former, but have dropped the latter for the moment.

For a more detailed break down -

Races: Don't brew my own. I often change the names of the existing ones. I usually limit the available races. I occasionally tweak the mechanics of the existing races - half-orcs have Low Light rather than Dark vision, sometimes an additional bonus to Con. Narrative suitability rather than balance tends to be the driving principle. But having seen people 'crash' (as Gilladin so nicely put it) the system before, I tend to be fairly cautious with changes.

Classes: I've never home-brewed new classes. But I have home-brewed (with a little help) a classless generation system. It was basically just a point buy system for the the Core material. It was fairly rough and ready, and I never really played it enough to iron out the wrinkles.

Templates: Never really used them. Never done anything with them.

Feats: Don't brew my own. The odd tweak to existing ones on one or two occasions. I think.

Skills: Don't brew my own. I tend to hand out more skill points, and don't pay much attention to class and cross class distinctions. I like the idea of making languages work as skills, the more ranks, the more proficient the character.

Deities: I don't tend to use the existing pantheon much. I Stole Fajita's pantheon from 'Welcome to the Halmae' (see Enworld Story Hour Forum) for one of my vanilla fantasy games. The anime setting tends to be monotheistic, with saints representing different domains. In the feudal japan setting, the domains represent different 'aspects' of the 'godhead', the all encompassing spirit of things. Different sects revered different combinations of aspects. There were a couple of established ones and the players were free to create their own as well.

Domains: Apart from the above, I've never modified any of the domains, or created any new ones.

Spells: Pretty much used as is. I very rarely play spell-casters, and am not really familiar with the specifics.

Psionics: Used as is, when used.

Items: Used as is. I based technology around the magic item rules in my anime game: +2 Fortified Plate Armour with Goggles of the Night and Gauntlets of Ogre Strength became heavy powered armour with night vision. Something like that.

Vehicles: If the setting has vehicles, I tend to just give them basic stats like speed, range, firepower etc. Mostly its just descriptive.

Other: Can't think of anything.

 

[Nifft]

Everything except skills and vehicles.

Cheers, -- N

 

[SewerSquirrel]

When I saw the title to this thread, was was totally jazzed thinking I can finally post my recipe for this killer Oatmeal Stout brew I make. It's similar to Stone Brewing Co.'s Imperial Russian Stout. Oh well. Maybe next time.